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Boy’s suicide blamed on bullying

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoGregg Vigliotti | The New York TimesFamily members and friends grieve outside a Stamford, Conn., church after Friday’s funeral for Bart Palosz. The 15-year-old, who was described as a bullying victim, killed himself on Tuesday.

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GREENWICH, Conn. — Boys picked on Bart Palosz almost from the moment his family moved to this
affluent town seven years ago. They taunted him for his foreign accent — he was born in Poland —
pushed him into bushes or down stairs and smashed his new Droid cellphone, his sister said.

On Tuesday, after the first day of school, Bart killed himself with the family shotgun. He was
15, just beginning his sophomore year at Greenwich High School.

His death has left the community, which has 9,000 students in its school district, asking
whether it did enough to address the bullying or to provide support for Bart, who had posted his
suicidal thoughts, and details of a possible earlier attempt, on social media.

His sister, Beata, 18, said Bart loved computers and hoped to go to New York University to study
technology. He was an active member of Boy Scout Troop 9.

But Beata Palosz also described a steady pattern of bullying that escalated as her brother got
older. In the past, she had tried to look out for him at school. This fall, she was starting her
first year of college and he was alone: a tall, slightly overweight boy who did not fight back
against his tormentors and who assured his family that things had improved.

Beata Palosz said her parents met with school officials on four occasions to discuss the
bullying, but it continued.

“We asked for help over and over,” she said. “The school said they would do something, but they
never did.”

William S. McKersie, superintendent of Greenwich’s public schools, said on Thursday that school
officials were aware of the bullying Bart had endured but declined to comment on specific incidents
or school responses because the district was still reviewing its files.

But he said officials were unaware of Bart’s posts about suicide on social media.

Another school district employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bart had met with a
guidance counselor 10 or 12 times in the past school year, but he had told her things were
fine.

Connecticut law requires schools to have a “safe-school climate specialist to investigate or
supervise the investigation of all reports of bullying” and to notify the police if the school “
believes that any acts of bullying constitute criminal conduct.”

In recent decades, 49 states and the District of Columbia have passed anti-bullying laws — all
but Montana. But studies of their effectiveness have produced mixed results, especially at the
high-school level.

At a funeral for Bart at the Holy Name of Jesus Church in Stamford, Conn., on Friday afternoon,
neighbors, classmates, fellow Boy Scouts and school officials mourned the young man. Football
players arrived in uniform. Nearly every pew was filled, with people standing in the back.

A family friend, Brian Raabe, 47, gave a eulogy urging the community to take responsibility for
the suicide:

“His death can only have meaning if the bullying and indifference that led to his feelings of
isolation and despair are confronted,” he said.

“The simple observation that kids can be cruel is not action, it is an excuse, an inequitable
pardon for those whose actions led to us being here today and an excuse for not teaching our
children well.”

Experts caution that suicide is a complex act, committed for reasons known only to those who
commit it.

Bart left a trail of suicidal musings on his Google Plus page. On June 7, he described an
apparent attempt to kill himself: “Goodbye forever my good friends, goodbye, I regret nothing,” he
wrote. “I have chosen to go with 3 peoples advice and kill myself. I just wish it was faster.”